Archive for April 18th, 2010

Around November 19, 2009, stolen emails and computer code from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) were uploaded to a publicly accessible Russian Web server. The controversy went viral and was dubbed Climategate. Climategate was an obvious attempt to subvert the UN Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen a few weeks later and I blogged on the CRU Hack on November 24 to show why these stolen emails did not undermine the integrity of climate science.

The main targets of the anti-science crowd were Dr. Phil Jones, Director of the CRU, and Dr. Michael Mann of The Pennsylvania State University. These highly respected scientists were accused of hiding data, fudging data, avoiding requests for information, and purposefully blocking peer-reviewed journals from IPCC reviewers. Furthermore, the “big guns” of the climate change denialosphere such as Marc Morano of Climate Depot, Anthony Watts of WattsUpWithThat, and conservative “think tanks” such as Americans for Prosperity, the Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, and Competitive Enterprise Institute, among others, attempted to spin these emails as somehow proving that there was a massive international conspiracy to promote global warming.